Rhythm and Ruby: Senior Ruby Wagner pursues her passion for drumming as part of the jazz band The Blue Knights

Senior Ruby Wagner sat behind her shiny silver drum set, peeking her head around the cymbals to see the crowd of around 100 people at the 2023 annual Prairie Village Jazz Festival on Sept. 9. Wagner’s role in the band was heard through each rhythmic thump and crash of her flying sticks to the beat of “Mamacita” by Joe Henderson. It was impossible for the audience not to notice her.

Preparing for her third year of performing in this event with East’s top jazz band — The Blue Knights — Wagner spent three weeks of each sixth-hour block period practicing with the group, led by band director Alex Toepfer.

“When Ruby’s behind the drum set, I don’t have to worry about anything,” Toepfer said. “I just know that she’s always going to do the right thing. She’s in the top 1% of students I’ve had in my career.”

Wagner started drumming at Belinder Elementary School in fifth grade. She then spent the next seven years practicing and taking lessons at Explorers, a drumming company,  to improve with her coach, Doug Auwarter. But the most recent spark in her musical career was joining a quartet last November with East alums Delia Cashman, bassist, Henry Revare, a trumpet player, piano player and sophomore, Nash Ohlund.

“We’re really close,” Wagner said. “And it happened really fast. We just started playing a lot together after school and just got really close after that.”

They began practicing after school four times a week until December when they played their first gig. While searching through a thrift store for the perfect uniform, the four came across matching Pink Whitney hats. With Revare’s middle name being Payne, the group realized that they had found their name — Whitney Payne.

“At that start, I didn’t think I was gonna like [the quartet],” Ohlund said. “I was like this is kind of nerdy, but now they’re my best friends.”

The group was able to book gigs mostly because of connections through friends’ parents, the first being saxophonist, Sean Reed, whose dad owned Rock Creek Brewing Company where they first played an official gig.

After the first event, they continued to play at various holiday events throughout December. With all the extra practice, the group naturally fell in sync which became one of Wagner’s core memories.

“I remember one time we were playing in the band room and we played syncopated path and all of us stopped playing at the same time and we just freaked out,” Wagner said.

Although Revare and Cashman have gone to college, the quartet still practices every few weeks and makes runs to their beloved post-performance restaurant Chelly’s Cafe on long weekends when everyone is in town. They dedicate time to hang out one night while everyone is in town and then practice the next day. 

They recently played their biggest gig yet at the Crossroads Music Festival on August 26 where Wagner used a provided drum set rather than her own. Her frustration from how she might have played better if it was her own set, left her mind when the set owner told her he’d never heard someone play like she had.

“It was nice to hear that I brought something out of the drums that he hadn’t heard before,” Wagner said. “So that was cool.”

It also taught Wagner how crucial vulnerability is when it comes to playing an instrument that she wasn’t used to for big groups. The event became a test of if she could play as well as she would on her own set.

The quartet has performed original pieces like “Beatrice” and “Nardis” written by Revare. Wagner believes they specifically click and sync as a group when playing these songs. This helps them perform more loosely because they enjoy what they’re playing. It was something they would want to listen to whether or not they were practicing. Wagner is in the process of writing her own music, though she has yet to debut it in front of a crowd.

Besides the quartet, Wagner practices the drums in all of her four band classes, Jazz Nights, Marching Band, Music Technology and Independent Study with Toepfer. Though she might not be back at the Prairie Village Jazz Festival next year, since she graduates this spring, Wagner plans to continue her musical career and take on more opportunities to play.

“I hope that we can get more gigs where people are listening to us and not just background,” Wagner said. “I feel like we’re on a steep path, getting good at our instruments.”